Micro-scale element migration during eclogitisation in the Bergen arcs (Norway) : a case study on the role of fluids and deformation

Understanding chemical element mobility during high-pressure metamorphism is paramount to the knowledge of the transformations occurring during the course of eclogite-facies metamorphism. In particular, the role of deformation and fluid circulation appear essential. In order to better decipher this role, we investigated two eclogite-facies samples from the Lindas Nappe in the Bergen arcs (Norwegian Caledonides), which are related to a fluid/deformation metamorphic event. This study, based on detailed microtextural investigations, coupled with major and trace element analyses, either in situ EMPA and LA-ICP-MS or by conventional ICP-MS nebulisation on mineral fractions, illustrates the complexity of chemical reactions accompanying the eclogite- and amphibolite-facies metamorphism. A single eclogite-facies mineral species two eclogite-facies (i.e. phengite and epidote) depicts various chemical features depending on its textural location at thin-section scale. The correlation with the mineralogical reaction occurring in each textural site demonstrates that the compositional variations are inherited from the precursor minerals. Thus, the composition of eclogite-facies minerals is locally controlled by the composition of few hundred-micron domains. On the contrary, alteration phases of the amphibolite facies (symplectite and calcic amphibole) display clear enrichment in LILE, Pb, Sr and LREE compared to their precursor minerals (omphacite and garnet). This supports that the transport of elements at hand-sample scale was enhanced during the retrogression and elements were efficiently delocalised from one textural site to another. The contrasting behaviour of element mobility between peak eclogite-facies metamorphism and retrogression can be explained in terms of rate processes and fluid/deformation activity. During eclogitisation,deformation allows the formation of textural and mineralogical microdomains. Contemporaneously the fluid circulation favours the development of heterogeneities by transport of elements in excess towards areas protected from deformation where phengite-bearing quartz lenses crystallise. This, together with the very fast recrystallisation of eclogite-facies minerals, results in a heterogeneous redistribution of elements at sample scale and in a chemical disequilibrium between different microdomains of hundred-micron size. During retrogression in the amphibolite facies, coeval with long-term ductile deformation, the fluids act as an efficient vector to redistribute the elements from a given textural site to another and, thus, allow to reach, at hand-sample scale, a new chemical equilibrium between the different crystallising phases